Deepening with the Earth

How to nourish yourself with Nature connection

Aiding our wellbeing through Nature contact has become a truism, but as life keeps getting more uncertain and demanding, we truly need to deepen with the Earth, for both emotional and physical health. That’s what this blog explores.

Let’s start with emotional connection: here are a few approaches you could try.

  • Deepening roots enables our growth upwards

    Talk with a tree: there are skills which will help this, such as slowing right down from human speed to tree speed. Humans, like trees, reach down with their roots for nourishment, and upwards for light, expansion, and outputs – we too produce blossoms and fruits, metaphorically. For a 5-minute video of how to talk with a tree, click here.
  • Singing with Nature: in my decades of involvement, I found that singing outdoors in a beautiful natural setting is hugely nourishing for people, and also in my belief for Nature too. Here’s a lovely chant, sung by my friend, Mike Hadden, which draws on Native American teachings about the unity of all life.
  • Learn community skills from the forests: in our individualistic society, and with stress levels rising, mutual support in groups becomes vital, but it may need new skills. Peter Wohlleben’s best-selling book, The Hidden Life of Trees, is a touching exposition of how a forest is a community, and what we can learn as humans: see more in my blog.
  • Use gardening skills to cultivate yourself: this is the subtitle of my forthcoming book, Natural Happiness. You can already access some of its ideas, processes and resources at naturalhappiness.net.

Moving on to our physical connection with the Earth, a crucial part of this is food: we are what we eat, and a lot of human illness is linked to the dis-ease of our planet. We can already see that the climate crisis is causing food shortages and price rises, so food security should be one factor in your care for your physical resilience. It’s an issue I’ve been exploring for several years through my Seeding our Future project, and here are some resources you may find useful:

  • The big picture on food security: for starters, see this blog overview of Professor Tim Lang’s useful book, Feeding Britain.
  • Community responses: some of the best antidotes to food security and affordability are collective ones, and the Bridport Food Matters project could provide useful experience: see a project profile here.
  • Global food outlook: Jem Bendell has recently produced a well-researched paper which gives a good overview of the future outlook and the major drivers affecting it. To see the report click here.
  • Regenerative agriculture offers a route to more sustainable agriculture, and also some approaches we humans can learn from. See a guest blog here.

Looking at the bigger picture, the processes needed to restore the Earth’s physical resilience are quite parallel to those we need for our personal resilience too. Try reading climate commentaries through this lens, or explore at www.naturalhappiness.net.